Ex-I'cons watch...

[Holyjoe]

How are the three English-based players who made a bee-line out of Busan almost as soon as they arrived getting on?

Jon Olav Hjelde
5 starts
3 yellow cards

Forest have won only once when he played, 2-0 against Sthingyhorpe in the League Cup.

Jamie Cureton
2 starts (2 sub appearances)
1 goal

QPR have won only once when he played, 3-0 against Swansea in the League Cup when Curo scored.

Chris Marsden
6 starts

Four wins, two defeats for Sheffield Wednesday with Marsden in the side, and they too won their League Cup game.

Marsden missed the weekend match against Oldham "because of family problems" (according to the Owls rivals site)... wonder what they could be?

[Ed.]

Holyjoe said:

Sthingyhorpe

Looks like the auto-censor is working a bit too well. ;D

Wonder if Marsden, back in Sheffield, is living in Penistone?

[Ed.]

Hmmm...that one got through.

[SteveW]

Haha....its just like the old days of AFC Chat HJ

Mbottyille!!

Bottynal!!

Orangutan!!

Slady-bitshorpe!!

[SteveW]

Oh....talking about Ex-Icons:

Where is Gaucho?

[Holyjoe]

SteveW said:

Oh....talking about Ex-Icons:

Where is Gaucho?

Glue factory?

[Colombian]

SteveW said:

Oh....talking about Ex-Icons:

Where is Gaucho?

Playing in The Portuguese Super League, for Rio Ave FC...
And quite happy to be out of here.

[Colombian]

Another ex-icon that's wandering around Korea: Harry Castillo.
Contrary to published rumors, he continues to be a Seongnam player, and is training with the 'b' team. After a rather nasty confrontation with the manager, they decided they hate each other passionately. Harry has a 2 year contract, and he was offered a release... however, he told the club to stuff it and intends to ride out the next year and a half on the second team bench if necessary, just to make them pay every cent they contracted with him..
I heard horror stories about the way that Seongnam got rid of 3 of their foreigners from the first semester, Harry, Aldemar, and Ireneu... Hearing them tell it remided me of stories from people getting fired from Hagwons when the boss just makes up excuses and accusations just to get out of the contract. Sad.

[SteveW]

Colombian said:

Another ex-icon that's wandering around Korea: Harry Castillo.
Contrary to published rumors, he continues to be a Seongnam player, and is training with the 'b' team. After a rather nasty confrontation with the manager, they decided they hate each other passionately. Harry has a 2 year contract, and he was offered a release... however, he told the club to stuff it and intends to ride out the next year and a half on the second team bench if necessary, just to make them pay every cent they contracted with him..
I heard horror stories about the way that Seongnam got rid of 3 of their foreigners from the first semester, Harry, Aldemar, and Ireneu... Hearing them tell it remided me of stories from people getting fired from Hagwons when the boss just makes up excuses and accusations just to get out of the contract. Sad.

Having read that I'm confused....Harry is there or not? The first paragraph says he is there....the second one says they got rid of him.

If Harry is happy not to play football for 2 years just to make money and piss off Seongnam then it says a lot about him.

[nyujeelandsaram]

I think this is the point where Seongnam have to step in and say, look we'll pay off HALF your remaining contract if you sod off now.

That way he get's money for nothing (like most professional footballers) while Seongnam get to buy a new foreigner who they can start for 5 weeks till they find he's useless as well and then drop him to the reserves and cut him later.

here's the cycle

New player comes
looks good on training pitch and in doctored video tapes
starts for team
plays ok
starts for team again
plays averagely
starts for team again
appears to have nothing to offer
sits on bench for 5 weeks
plays in reserves for a month
says bad things about the coaches style, tactics and team selections
coach ignores him
player bad mouths coach behind his back
coach tells admin to pay the guy off
player leaves
new player arrives
looks good on training pitch and in doctored video tapes

I think that describes about half of the foreign players who come here with a few variations on the theme.

[Holyjoe]

If Harry Castillo is still contracted to Seongnam, then that kind of confirms Jasenko Sabitovic's Korean citizenship...

They have the following on the books:
Ivan Testemitanu
Andrei Solamatin
Marcelo Macedo
Dudu
Jasenko Sabitovic
Harry Castillo

They wouldn't be allowed that unless Sabitovic is definitely a citizen... so in theory they could play with five 'foreigners' now including Lee Song-nam?

[Holyjoe]

Didn't Sasa Drakulic have some sort of problem with the Seongnam bigwigs? There were stories of a fall-out with Kim Do-hoon and then rumours that he absolutely hated it there and couldn't wait until his contract finished to leave.

[Colombian]

Harry is now basically an employee of the Seongnam Ilhwa corporation, but not part of the soccer team playing roster.
To be fair with him, he's not one of the 'come-and-see-if-you-don't-suck' players, a la Gaucho; At the time of Seongnam hiring him, he was a proven k-leaguer, having played 3 years here and posting pretty consistent performances. He was given a 2 year contract, not one of the 4 month trials that are so popular also these days.
He was performing as well as can be expected in Seongnam this season, considering that the team is almost all new guys. ---Whoever said that players don't transfer between k-league teams was wrong. They do, and quite a lot, it just isn't visible--- Seongnam got rid of 7 regular starters after last season's championship... and expected to win the tiltle again.
So in the middle of the first phase, when the team was not winning at all, the coach was quite upset. There was a confrontation on the training pitch, and the end result was that from that day the coach stopped putting Harry on the gameday roster.
Then one day Seongnam presented a new foreigner, with the number 10 jersey (Harry's number), and they told Harry that he had to sign a contract termination. He immidiately talked to FIFA, and they said that a team can't simple fire a player, and he should sign nothing.
Anyways, there's a lot more layers to this, and its still ongoing... I'll write more about this later.

Oh, and, yes, Jasenko is korean now.

[nyujeelandsaram]

Colombian said:

---Whoever said that players don't transfer between k-league teams was wrong. They do, and quite a lot, it just isn't visible---

Just wondering then since it "isn't visible".

Do a lot of players who are ditched by one team go and train with another team before being offered a contract?

I think the comment about not much player movement (which wasn't made by me) within the league was centered around the fact that MOST players come and then leave the league completely or else are currently still at their original club.

I don't know what the ratio is or anything. It might be an 'interesting' wee piece of research for HJ ;D. Though it's hard to do as so often teams sign foriegners and don't really use them all that much and then they slip away.

I remember seeing a photo of the entire Anyang squad from the start of 2003 and from memory their were about 8 foreigners in the picture. Since they were only allowed 5 (and now 4) I guess a lot were just trialing. Also if a club was cashed up enough they could have several foreigners at the club with 4 playing and on the books and a few basically waiting in the wings incase any of those guys aren't wanted anymore.

[Holyjoe]

I remembered I had this wee list somewhere... it's a list of most of the switches in the pre-2004 season up until about mid-February (definitely not past the beginning of March when Ko Jong-soo signed on at Suwon as his name's not on the list).

www.suwonfootball.com/transfers2004.html

Quite a lot of the names are making the step up from High School or University football, but there's the odd inter-league move.